One way to avoid re-taking the Quality professional certification tests that I took earlier in the year is to get additional training, take more tests, write a book, or attend a rubber chicken dinner. The latter seemed like a good bet.
"I'll take rubber chicken dinner for 0.6 recertification units, Alex."
For the unemployed and those with other dinner plans, there is a zero dollar meeting attendance option that fits the needs of those who wish to sit in the middle while everyone around them eats.
The table for the 'non-eaters' was directly in front of the buffet so that all the other attendees had to walk around us to get to the food. There was a time when that would have made me feel awkward but giving birth in a teaching hospital and two years working in a call center pretty much knocked out whatever embarrassment was residual.
The 'non-eaters' were mostly non-talkers as well, so dinner time went slowly. The sole exception was a long-haired Buddhist who bragged and name-dropped while occasionally slapping the side of his head to loosen water that he said he got into his ear because he wasn't used to washing long hair. And, again, I don't make this stuff up.
Quality people are an eccentric lot. They generally dress poorly. Many of them wear glasses. They mumble and avoid eye contact.
I felt at home.
During the lull amid the clacking of knives and forks, head slapping, and the other non-eaters playing with their phones, I had time to draw this cartoon.
2 comments:
I have just learned that due to my recent and LONG overdue promotion, I must now attend "Quality Academy."
One more anti-productivity nail in the ol' career coffin..
Sadly, it's not quite like Starfleet Academy.
Remember not to reprogram the Kobayashi Maru simulation.
And you are correct -- never give people the idea that you are concerned about the quality of the product or service or think that there might be other than a completely seat-of-the-pants way to analyze, measure or manage it. That's slow and painful career death.
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